


Not Made to Last

by Vexie



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Pining, Scene Expansion, cute baby caleb, sad wizards in the snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-11-28 20:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20972474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vexie/pseuds/Vexie
Summary: "It’s Jester who catches his eye. Jester is dancing as snow falls around her, glittering in the early morning sunlight. Tiny diamonds of snow are stuck in her hair and to her dark emerald cloak like thousands of tiny decorations. Her eyes are glittering like the snowflakes and she’s laughing—real laughter that reaches her whole face and every line of her body."Caleb has a few revelations about his fleeting dreams in the snow.Scene expansion of the moment when Caleb draws the Jester-Angel on the ground in episode 77.





	Not Made to Last

**Author's Note:**

> Cleaned up and cross-posted from Tumblr!

In Caleb’s mind, everything has been decided. They are going back to Roshana where Caleb will go speak with the _Vollstrecker_ in the dungeon again. He zeroes in on this goal, letting the rest of the group’s chatter fade out. He takes out his chalk and begins drawing the teleportation circle, part of his mind already dedicated to planning what he’s going to say to her. As if he hasn’t been thinking about this since the moment they’d left the first time. (After he’d failed so completely to control himself—his old master would be so disappointed in him. His interrogation skills are so rusty now, his mind so easily distracted.) He stops before adding the final few lines, looking up at the rest of the Nein. He takes the breath to ask whether they’re ready to go, but stops, the question falling dead on his lips.

The group is standing around laughing. It’s good to see, of course. They’ve had so few reasons to laugh lately. But it’s Jester who catches his eye. Jester is dancing as snow falls around her, glittering in the early morning sunlight. Tiny diamonds of snow are stuck in her hair and to her dark emerald cloak like thousands of tiny decorations. Her eyes are glittering like the snowflakes and she’s laughing—real laughter that reaches her whole face and every line of her body. She falls backward, spreading her arms and legs out wide. For a moment, she lays in the snow, then she sweeps her arms up and down in wide motions, her trailing sleeves making the design in the snow a little more chaotic than it usually would be. Caleb searches for the word for this activity in Common. Even in his birth tongue, it takes him a moment to remember the word. _Schneeengel. Snow Angel_. Memories tug at Caleb’s mind—old memories from that forbidden time _before._

_“Like this, Bren!” Una makes the motions, standing above him. Bren waves his arms and legs through the snow like a wild starfish. He doesn’t quite have the dexterity to coordinate his arms and legs together yet. The snow manages to find its way down the back of his coat, leaving tingling paths down his neck and back. _

_ “It’s cold, Mama!” he giggles. “Is it done?” _

_ “Let’s see! Give me your hands so you don’t step in it,” Una says, leaning forward and reaching toward him. Bren reaches up and puts his small hands in hers. She swings him up and out of the dent he’d made in the snow, swaying him in the air a few times before setting him down next to her._

_ “Good job! Look!” Una points, kneeling next to him. Bren follows her finger obediently. There is a small shape in the snow, as tall as a four-year-old boy, with a wide bell-shaped bottom and big wings out to each side. _

_ “What is it, Mama?” Bren asks._

_ “It’s your snow angel. Look, there are the wings and the dress as she floats through the air,” Una says, showing him. Bren wrinkles his nose. _

_ “Why is it a girl angel? I’m a _boy_,” he says. “I should have a boy angel.”_

_ “Maybe it’s a boy and he’s wearing a robe, then,” Una amends._

_ “Should I give him a halo?” Bren asks. “Don’t angels need halos?” _

_ “Not always, but you can give him one if you’d like,” Una says._

_ Bren carefully walks around the angel and draws a line over its head with his finger. He thinks for a moment, then leans forward and pokes two dots for eyes on the face. He gives the angel a wide, open mouth._

_ “He’s happy because it’s snowing,” Bren explains._

_ Una laughs. Bren runs back over to her, lifting his knees high to maneuver through the soft snow._

_ “Now you make one!” Bren says. “Right next to mine!”_

_ Una agrees. She falls backward into the snow, laughing as she moves her arms and legs. She lets Bren draw the face and halo on her angel, too. They step back and admire the two angels, big and small._

_ “What do snow angels do, mama?” Bren asks._

_ “They’re windows so our guardian angels can watch over us. They can peek through and we can peek back. This way we can feel a little closer to them,” Una says._

_ “Does everybody have a guardian angel?” Bren asks._

_ “Of course. As long as you’re very good, your guardian angel will always watch over you,” Una says, hugging him._

_ For the next few days, Bren goes out to talk to his angel. He sits in the snow and tells the imprints in the snow about his favorite things and his adventures, just to make sure his angel knows all about him. He even introduces his angel to Frumpkin, who is less than pleased with the encounter, dashing off into the woods as quickly as possible._

_ One morning, Bren wakes up to find a fresh blanket of snow on the ground. The snow angels are gone, erased by the new snowfall. Una finds him sitting in the window, big tears rolling down his cheeks._

_ “What’s wrong, my heart?” she asks, sitting on the edge of the windowsill next to him._

_ “My angel is gone. Now I can’t talk to him anymore,” Bren sniffles, looking up at her. Una frowns, confused, until she glances out the window to see the freshly fallen snow. She smiles and pulls her boy into her lap, wrapping her arms around him._

_ “Just because you can’t see him anymore doesn’t mean he’s not there. Papa’s not gone forever when he’s on patrol, is he?” Una asks._

_ “No, he’s busy protecting us,” Bren says, wiping at his eyes. _

_ “That’s right! And just like Papa will come home soon, we can go out after breakfast and make new angels in the snow,” Una say soothingly. “Snow angels aren’t made to last, love. They always vanish, but we can always make them again. They’ll melt in the spring, remember? But we can make more next winter.”_

_ “What if the snow melts and it never snows again?” Bren asks. Una brushes his curly hair away from his forehead and plants a kiss there._

_ “Then you’ll have to believe your angel is still there anyway, and you can always remember all the fun you had together this winter,” she says. “Just because things only last a little while doesn’t make them any less wonderful, right?”_

_ Bren makes many snow angels that winter. He makes his mother make them with him as often as he can. A few times, he even gets Leofric to make some. It becomes his favorite winter activity that year._

Caleb blinks several times, a hand over his heart. Snow angels. He’d forgotten. He’d been so very young when he’d made snow angels with his mother. It had been a fleeting belief, but for that one winter, he’d dreamt of shining angels made of sparkling snow, singing and protecting him and his family every night. By the next winter, he was big enough to ride a sled on his own and snow angels were all but forgotten. He looks at Jester again, laughing as she makes angel after angel, connecting them as if they’re holding hands. His mother’s voice echoes in his mind, rich with laughter as they’d played together in the snow.

_As long as you’re very good, your guardian angel will always watch over you._

If that is truly the case, Caleb’s angel is long gone. No one is there to watch over him but himself. Not that he believes in such things anymore. He has not made a snow angel in a very long time.

Watching Jester, Caleb almost wants to make one now. She has that effect on him—on everyone around her, really. She has the most peculiar power to make everyone stop and see the fun and wonder in the world. How many times has she stopped their travels to point out the shape of a tree or a rock? How many times has she traced out entire stories in the stars during late night watches, making up her own constellations, even after Caleb had offered to teach her the widely accepted ones? Everyone in the party has become so attuned to this that “Dick Cloud” is now an unspoken traveling game. They don’t even have to say it anymore—someone will point and everyone else looks automatically. Jester has taught them to see things everywhere, to laugh at everything.

Because of Jester, they—no, _he_ has learned to see things in the world again. He sees fun things. He sees pretty things. He has learned to laugh again. It still surprises him when it happens, but it gets a little easier every day.

He hadn’t thought it were possible. But more and more he finds himself laughing when she tells jokes. He smiles at the little drawings and messages she leaves him if he leaves his books on the table. Sometimes he leaves his books out just to tempt her, leaving a note on the page along the vein of “I hope Jester does not mark on this page” for her to find only to be rewarded with an answer of “Jester would never ever do that! She is too good and cute!” with a little Jester cartoon blowing him a kiss or doing something equally as silly. He treasures all of them. Jester’s doodles in his books have gotten him through many drudging nights of study.

Caleb may not have a guardian angel anymore, but he does have a little blue tiefling watching over him, smiling and inviting him to come and play. Just as she’s doing now.

A small smile playing across his face, Caleb starts to stand but stops. Jester is still laughing and playing in the snow, but for the first time, Caleb notices where the fresh flurries of snow are coming from. Fjord is summoning his sword, brandishing it in a huge arc to throw snow out over the ground and sending it away in another gust of snow. He’s laughing too, an open, relieved laugh. His shining eyes never leave Jester. He aims the arcs of fresh, clean snow in the easiest place for Jester to fall next. He’s making a winter wonderland for her, his face warm and gentle as he works.

Caleb sits back on his heels, his smile fading. He may have Jester to save him, but Jester has Fjord watching over her. Fjord is her guardian, her protector. Not him. It’s very clear.

He is glad for her, he supposes. Those days on the sea were hard for her, with Fjord growing cold and distant (with and without Avantika). There had been times where Caleb had wanted to shake Fjord for what he was doing to Jester. Had he been a different kind of man, he likely would have. Instead, he let Jester play with Frumpkin and tell him her woes, as he quietly seethed in the belly of their ship.

_“If I were Fjord, I would not look further than what I have right here,” _Caleb had said to her once, the words slipping out. Jester had smiled and thanked him, her voice platonically fond. He’d been relieved that she’d not noticed the way his face burned afterward, startled by the truth of his own words.

Lately, though, Fjord and Jester’s relationship seems to have improved. It’s good for the both of them, Caleb thinks, watching the soft smile on Fjord’s face. Fjord needs someone loving like Jester, and Jester needs someone heroic like Fjord. It’s very good. 

_Then why does it feel so wrong?_ A small, rebellious part of him asks. A part he tries to ignore. Seeing Fjord and Jester playing together like this makes his heart sink. He hates it. He hates knowing what it means. At least with Fjord and Jester’s relationship improving, he doesn’t have to worry about all the _what ifs_ that have been plaguing him lately. For just a moment, he’d dared to dream a little bit. No matter whether he should, he couldn’t help it. He’d closed his eyes and thought of a future full of blue skin and violet eyes and a blearily remembered waltz. _What if_ they just walked away to find their own fortunes, together? _What if_ he wasn’t the person he was who’d done what he’d done, and who had to do what he must do? _What if_ they got a little cottage by the sea? _What if_…

But now, he can put his _what-ifs away. _It’s better that way. She’ll be happier with Fjord and that’s all Caleb wants for her. He can be the hero she needs. And as long as Jester is happy, that’s what’s really important.

Caleb’s eyes stray back to Jester. He picks up a piece of his chalk and draws a little blue angel on the stone near the teleportation circle—not near enough to confuse the magic. He’s no artist—not like her. But his hand is steady and precise—it has to be. The symbols he uses in his spells must be exact, and he’s a good student. He draws her like a snow angel with a little triangle body and big arcing wings. He doesn’t give her a halo like the one in his memory. Instead, he draws little curlicue horns on either side of her head and a little tail peeking out from behind the bell-shaped dress. But her mouth is still wide and laughing just like all those years ago. Maybe he’d had a premonition, when he was a boy, that the one looking out for him would be laughing like that.

“Hmm.” The noise makes him jump. Caleb looks up guiltily. Beau glances down at the drawing at up at Caleb. She raises her eyebrows in a silent question, lips curling in a small smirk. He can almost hear her—

_You wanna talk about it?_

Caleb shakes his head quickly, feeling the blush rise to his cheeks. He tries to erase the chalk drawing, but only manages to smudge it a little. Beau’s smirk widens, though her face isn’t unkind. He knows her well enough by now to know the difference. He shoots her a glare.

_Don’t say anything._

Beau tilts her head to one side in confusion as if she doesn’t understand what he means, but her eyes dance with mischief. Caleb had never had a younger sister, but he imagines that this is what it would have been like. He tries to glare harder. Beau holds her stare for a moment longer, then her eyes soften. She gives him a tiny nod, turning her attention back to the group.

A few minutes later, they’re ready to go. Caleb finishes the last few lines on his transportation circle and herds the group through. If he rushes them quicker than usual so they don’t have time to notice his little drawing, they don’t say anything about it. 

He glances at the hillside one last time, where dozens of Jester-angels are left in the snow. Just before he steps through, a light snowfall begins, soon to erase them all. After all her work and all of the fun and joy they’d brought, they’ll have gone without a trace, hidden under the snow. No one will ever see them. And no one will ever see the small blue angel, drawn in a crude, mathematically trained hand on the stone.

It was nice, he thinks, to dream for a little while. To dance through _what if_’s and believe, just for a moment. Even if it wasn’t made to last, it was good.

Caleb steps through the circle and the snow angels are gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! 
> 
> I'd posted this to Tumblr right after that episode aired, but I haven't had time to sit down and do the Ao3 copy. I'm happy I had a chance to do so! That moment was so cute to me...just a little Liam detail that made me go "yeah, this boy has it BAD for one little blue tiefling" <3 
> 
> Let me know what you thought, or just feel free to gush about the cuteness Laura and Liam blessed us with in episode 77, even though it's old news now. I'm still happy <3 <3


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